Confessions of a Sue's Best friend
by Miss Black Shadow
Summary: Full Summary inside. A sarcastic and cynical look to Marysue through the eyes of her best friend. How much will the Sue mess up Marie's life?


**Disclaimer: I don't own phantom. There happy. Now that you've crushed my hopes and dreams. You evil person I hope you're happy.**

**A/N:** For those still waiting for 24k, I'm now out of school. Unfortunately my computer with all my stories on it died. I'm going to try and pick up where I left but I may need to rewrite the whole thing for consistancy sake. This story was written on a different computer thus why I'm posting it. So I'm going to try now that I have free days, but it may take awhile. I apologize deeply but I will finnish the story.

Summary: 18 year-old Marie is your average ballet rat/ chorus member at the opera Populaire. Perfectly content with her life of dancing, singing, worrying about reviews and pining quietly after Gabriel, the cutest baritone to ever grace the stage. Then _she_ came along.

Now Marie is balancing not only her hectic life but the emotional mood swings of her _Best_ friend. She keeps finding her self cornered by canon characters wanting advice, and worst of all Gabriel's falling for the wrong girl! What's a girl to do when her best friends a Mary-Sue?

**September 16****th **_**The ballet living quarters 10pm **_

Dear Diary,

The rain this morning promised that today was just going to be another day.

The rain lied.

It started out normal enough. The only big event scheduled for today was the annual auditions for the company. It normally is just a formality, the Managers hate bringing on new people. The few ways you get in the paid company are if you were amazingly talented, someone quit, or your parents have money. Yes, the opera takes charity cases every once in a while, but our last charity case was her ingénue self Mlle. Christine Daae. And she was the daughter of a famous violinist. Judge the management as you will. On average we hired 10-20 new cast members, but never more. The company hasn't changed drastically in nearly two years, but we still made quality work and we had bonded. We're all a family; a drunk, delusional, and slightly over sexed family, but a family none the less.

So I got up this morning and did my usual routine of visiting the baths (after swatting that disgusting Joseph Buquet away from the door), brushed my short dark hair, dressed, and went to warm up for the auditions. I do admit I was looking forward to auditions to show off how I recently managed to a grand fouetté en tournant. Alright so it's still a little shaky, but I'm sure the adrenaline will help.

When I got to the exercise rooms half of the dancers were there, the other half I had left snoring. I could hear the singers warming up on stage and her grand highness Carlotta was screeching about something. Carlotta was one of the few members of our dysfunctional family who weren't that welcome.

Anyway I went and grabbed my customary place at the bar next to Meg and Jammes. They were both good dancers, a little rough for my taste, but they were great to gossip with. Meg leaned over to me and asked, "Have you seen Sorelli?"

"No" I replied, "She was out late with you know who."

Jammes wrinkled her nose, "That Comte person again!?"

"De Chagny" I stated dipping down for my demi-plie. "At least she's mistress to a man with money."

Meg shook her head, "I think, she thinks its love."

Jammes snorted, "Even she can't be that naïve."

At that point the before-mentioned Sorelli stumbled in looking disheveled, a shocking change from her normal professional shine. We all exchanged giggles as she ran straight into the ballet mistress. A few short words were exchanged on both sides then the mistress gave Sorelli a weird look. With a sharp gesture she sent Sorelli to the showers to make herself decent. I bit my lip hard to keep from laughing, till she passed. I wasn't the only one Meg looked close to tears and Jammes kept sniggering. We couldn't hold it in any longer and burst out laughing; the ballet mistress then called us to the main stage for auditions.

Auditions always went dancers, chorus, anyone ambitious enough to try for a lead without being a Prima Ballerina, Principle, Prima Donna, or Prima Uomo, then the top tier of talent paraded for everyone to see. The whole company was required to stay till the end of auditions, but paying attention was optional.

We arrived onstage and Meg elbowed me in the ribs, "Look! It's angel boy!"

I elbowed her back harder than necessary, "Shut up!"

Angel boy is what she calls Gabriel. It's not just that his name is Gabriel he also looks like an angel. He has blonde hair, blue eyes, is tall and has a smile that can make a girl swoon at twenty paces.

I've liked him since we ran into each other by accident During Marriage of Figaro. I had to run to the other side of stage for an entrance only eight measures after my exit. Evidentially he had an entrance on the side I exited and we collided. I was knocked down and I thought I saw stars. He offered his hand to me and effortlessly lifted me off the ground. Granted I'm not that tall but he didn't mind looking down at me smiling and murmured a sorry as he passed, all I did was gape and then hear the music for my entrance. That wasn't our only encounter but it seems whenever I'm near him I get really hot and flustered. The last thing I had said to him was that I liked bananas last night at dinner. I'm an idiot sometimes.

I smiled as Gabriel waved. Christine, who seemingly appeared out of nowhere, tapped me on the shoulder, "So when are you going to talk to him?"

I glared at her, and then spied the brothers De Changy strolling in like they owned the place. Odd that Sorelli looked so disheveled while the Comte looked so put together, she was obviously losing her touch. I glanced back at Christine, "I'll speak with Gabriel when you can jog the Vicomte's memory of you."

Christine's normally large eyes widened as she turned beet red, she hid behind Meg. That girl's been acting really weird ever since she became an understudy. She hasn't performed for a real audience yet, but when she moved into her new dressing room she began acting real twitchy. It's almost like she's hiding from something. She and I aren't really close, but I hope she doesn't get herself into too much trouble; she sometimes has a hard time separating real life from fantasy. In all honestly, we all thought Christine's promotion to understudy was a pity move on M. Mercer's part. The poor girl can make a rooster sound like a nightingale.

At that moment the MM. Debienne and Poligny, our managers, came onstage with two other gentlemen. It took them a few tries to get everyone's attention but M. Reyer got everyone's attention easily enough.

When we were all done flinching at Reyer's attempt to play the violin, M. Debienne stepped forward rubbing his temples, "Thank you Reyer, that was certainly …effective. As you know we are starting a new season…"

It was Debienne's traditional pre-audition speech, most of us tuned out except for the announcements of the new shows we were to be doing. We were starting with Faust, always a good show.

I was fussing with my skirt when I felt someone walk up behind me. They said, "Bonjour Marie"

I turned red, it was Gabriel. I turned to him and squeaked, "Hi. How are you?"

He smiled at me, I could've died, "Really well, Debienne is going to announce this to everyone in a minute, but I wanted to let you know first."

Gabriel is only four years older than me, he's a score and two, but he had been with the company longer than I had. I nodded, "Alright."

He ran his fingers through his hair, "I'm not going to be singing this season."

My jaw dropped, "But why! You're so good, I mean, you can't stop singing now!"

He laughed and shook his head; I thought that was a bit mean considering I was complimenting him. "I was hoping you'd react like that. This is actually good news, Debienne and Poligny are retiring so they need a new acting manager. They chose me."

I grinned and hugged him quickly, he returned the embrace. We are friends after all, "That's fantastic news Gabriel. I'm assuming the other two gentlemen with them are going to take care of the business end."

He nodded, "Their names are M. Richard Firmin and M. Armand Monchramin."

I was puzzled; a bubble of hope grew inside of me. "Wait, but why did you want to tell me first?"

"Well," Gabriel said, "With the job comes with a raise which means I'll have more money to spend on some luxuries."

The bubble grew even more, "Yes, I'm sure that's nice"

"So I was wondering…"

That bubble just might burst, "Yes?"

"Would you and the other ballerinas like to go to a nice café on opening night?"

My bubble deflated and I stared at him for a minute before it registered what he had said. "Yes, a trip to the café would be very nice, Jammes has been dying to go somewhere outside of the opera."

He smiled, "Great. Now you better get in your place for the audition."

"Of course," I turned and walked to my place. I couldn't have felt more stupid then at that moment, except you know the banana comment.

My audition went well; I nailed all of my marks and the grand fouetté en tournant. Gabriel smiled at me after that, but then again he smiled at every one. The rest of the troupe did well, Christine almost careened into the curtain at one point but she covered really nicely. Four new girls got acceptances right away, and I have to admit they were really good. One's name was Cecil and she was good enough to have Firmin give her a standing ovation, thou I suspect it wasn't on her skill but on how low the top of her shirt was.

After that the auditions grew more monotonous, singers sang and the parade started. Carlotta strutted around and sang some aria, "Queen of the Night" or something like that. She was showing off for whoever would listen, most of us weren't. Piangi did some piece from Mozart as well, the two probably planned that on purpose. The other tenors and basses were good, not spectacular, but good. This new baritone named Jacques was hired; he had sung an aria from this composer named Wagner. All in all the parade was flashy and to the teeth with showing off.

We lowly observers soon grew bored offstage, and on traditional theatre fashion we started messing with each other. It started when someone put lemon juice in the drinking water, after that someone "accidentally" threw some plaster on Joseph. It turned into a silent war, so we wouldn't disturb the peacocks onstage. Expendable feathers, paint, and glue went flying. But just as the ballet corps was going to break out with the secret weapon of ribbons and the last sopranos were finishing up I heard this loud bang.

Everyone froze. Doors at the back of the stage that I didn't even know existed opened reveling this pitiful creature that was drenched and its petite figure was silhouetted in the lightening that came out of nowhere. It had only been drizzling before so the storms sudden ferocity should have been my first clue that something was wrong.

I walked towards the figure, partly out of curiosity and partly out of that stupid pity that plagues me. I reached the drenched woman, I could now see that it was a woman around my age if not a little older. She had long blonde hair that even though she was drenched if curled perfectly around her heart shaped face and her perfect aqua eyes. She had skin whiter than porcelain and was the perfect height, meaning taller than me. Her clothes had been torn to rags and even though they were brown it was the most flattering color, and they clung to her perfect curves.

She took one look at me and swooned oh so daintily at my feet. I looked around and realized I was the only one that moved, so by default I was going to have to check on her. I kind of toed her shoulder and there was no response so I got down and gently shook her shoulders, "Madame! Are you alright?"

She gasped and opened her eyes, "I'm not too late to audition am I?"

I looked at her, "You came out in the pouring rain to audition? Are you crazy?"

"No." She started to tear up, "I just need to get a job. Please help me."

I sighed blowing my hair out of my eyes, "What's your name?"

She looked nervous, "My name?... It's… Antoinette Jacqueline Genevieve de Merle"

I blinked at her, "I'll just call you Ann."

"Fine." Ann said, "Will you help me audition?"

"Alright" I helped her up and found Ann was quite spry for just being in a dead faint not but two minutes ago. We walked to centre stage and I waved Gabriel over, "This is Ann, She wants to audition, and I know it's highly unusual to let her at this point…"

"Nonsense, of course she can audition." Gabriel was staring at Ann. I was staring at Gabriel, mouth agape, when Reyer came over to see what was going on. I repeated what happened and Gabriel put his input in and Reyer made the decision to let her audition.

Ann gave my hand a squeeze before she let go and said, "Thank you so much, wish me luck."

I nodded mute and walked back to my spot next to the now tar and feathered Buquet. I watched as Gabriel smiled at Ann and slowly walked back to his spot next to Reyer. Ann timidly took center stage. She spared a glance at box five which made Christine, who was standing behind me, gasp. Reyer struck the familiar cords of the "Queen of the Night" aria. Carlotta fumed not-so-silently from her perch amongst her cronies. Ann's voice was perfect, like the sound of twinkling bells only stronger. No note was too high for her. Joseph, and all the other stage hands, I could tell weren't going to take their eyes off her. She sang with all her might and ended the aria with triumph.

Everyone clapped and she had a standing ovation. I was suddenly jostled by all the guys wanting to know her name. Ann herself curtsied shyly before she walked over to me and hugged me tightly, "Merci Mademoiselle! I did it! It's all thanks to you!"

I murmured that it wasn't that great of me. But then Ann started tearing up, "I don't know how I'll ever be able to repay you… you've done so much."

She hugged me again and I looked at Christine who looked very confused. I only had one though after that, _What just happened?_


End file.
